West Side Story

5. West Side Story

The unstoppable musical duo of composer Leonard Bernstein and lyricist Stephen Sondheim reached new heights with West Side Story, a modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet set in New York. The film adaptation of the successful Broadway show came out in 1961, with new orchestration by Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal, who had orchestrated the original Broadway production. With studio United Artists allowing them triple the amount of musicians as they had on Broadway, Bernstein was unhappy with the finished result, declaring the film's music to be "overbearing and lacking in texture and subtlety."